Advisability of getting an external hard drive?

[tollbaby]

As you all know, I recently got a "new" computer. It's got 128Megs of RAM and a 500mHz processor in it. I'm about to acquire another "new" computer (with a 1gHz processor and 128 Megs of RAM in it, with a maximum capacity of 512MB).

I'm considering networking the two (and another one I will likely be acquiring over the weekend, although I don't know the specs on that one), but I don't want to store my work on them... I'd rather store it on an external hard drive, with backups on the computers' hard drives themselves... is that possible?

I've also had big problems with my Microsoft Word documents becoming corrupted when I e-mail them back and forth to myself... will using a memory stick solve that problem? I'm *trying* to get organized and figure out what I'm doing because I want to take some coding classes, etc so I can get a bit better at all this stuff, but I've got to get my home system up and running properly first LOL

[Der Cute]

External HD:
use it for backup AND storage.

Do NOT leave data on the old hard drives. By the specs you're telling me I'm betting the HDs are around 10 or 20 maybe 40gb. Age wise, they're near death.

Corruption on word files? Strange, what version? I email back and forth to self, no problems there. A USB stick would be fine too. Be careful about encryption/ passwords, I suggest a pw for a usb stick.

Get a 300 GB or 350 external hd. That'll be big enough for you.

Oh, can you get the specs - the actual mobo stuff? i wonder if the 500mh ram would fit into the 1gh ram slots....It would be dependant on speed, power and board..but there is a slight chance.

You could also put a new hd or 2 into the 500, and use it as a file server. And use the 1g as your workstation.

Just ideas.

Cutenoob

[tollbaby]

If I have to open up the computer to find out what configuration the mobo is, I need to know where to look (I'm really not a very technical person, but I do have one side of the case kept screw-less so I can remove it easily to poke around). My ex is supposed to come over once the 1gh computer arrives to see if the RAM is compatible with the other computer (it's PC100 SDRAM, so I can't just buy more at the store) *sigh*

What I'd really like to do is buy a totally new system, but that's not financially possible right now. That's why I want to pick up an external hard drive, so I'll have something a bit more reliable to work with.

[digilight]

External hard drives are great. I have 2 right now, and am getting ready to buy a third soon for music. my oldest is a Western Digital 120 GB drive that I've had for about 3 years now and haven't had any trouble with it. My other one is a small 80 or so gig WD passport drive. The 120gb drive I use daily and have no complaints at all, the other one is just for backing up files to bring home and back to work. I needed something bigger then a memory stick at the time.

I'm looking at a 320gb I think My Book drive. I've seen them advertised for around a hundred bucks or so lately.

[draggar]

External HD:
use it for backup AND storage.

I'll second that! I picked up a WD 500GB USB drive a little over a month ago and I love it! Its great!! I store videos on it, web sites (backups), my music, large downloaded files, work drive (my 60GB usb drive) backups and so on.

Oh, can you get the specs - the actual mobo stuff? i wonder if the 500mh ram would fit into the 1gh ram slots....It would be dependant on speed, power and board..but there is a slight chance.

They should, not much has changed with RAM for a while, they're still the (I think) 168 pin DIMMs (or whatever they're called now). I've had 250 sticks in a 400MHz, and 400MHz in a 800MHz slot, so I know the 250MHz sticks WILL fit in the 800 and my new PC looks the same.

The only issue with throwing 250MHz sticks in a 1GHz board is that it WILL BE a HUGE bottleneck in a critical part of the computer. RAM is cheap now and not the place to go 'cheap' on (go 'cheap' by getting a smaller HDD for now or going with a DVD-ROM or CD-RW instead of the DVD +/- RW). I think it would work, but system performance would suffer.

The processor (500MHz) will NOT fit or work in the new motherboard.

Places not to go cheap or step back are also motherboard, RAM and video. Saving $100 on a processor and splitting it 50/50 between better RAM and video will make a difference, 3GHz and 3.3GHz (probabaly $100 difference now?) won't.

[Naaman]

You can find out what your motherboard is with Everest Home edition, it's freeware

As for external drives, I've always favoured getting the empty caddy and buying an OEM drive. It's cheaper, you can fit whatever size drive you want in it and you can get ones that accept IDE and SATA drives (especially good if you want a big drive now but may be using older drives as well) or even laptop drives if you want compact and. Downside is that you won't get all the bundled software.